Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Cunliffe is purportedly intelligent. He has degrees from Harvard. He has been around politics for a while. He speaks articulately. He espouses Labour policy easily. Physically, he is quite a dominating figure. He presents well. He holds an Auckland seat for Labour (not easy considering how blue Auckland is these days).

But how bloody hamfisted has his "coup" been? Shockingly, is the answer. That alone must end his political career. Not because of his disloyalty (per Heather Roy, ACT ~ 2009-2010) but simply because no one in his party could ever trust him again, and further, because it was the worst coup ever. Except for one - Heather Roy's silly attempt at the ACT leadership of a few years ago.

All Cunliffe had to do was pick up the phone and call Heather and ask her if publicly criticising the leader and secretly undermining him within the party and within the caucus was a good idea.

She would have said "look where I am now".

That would have cost him a few dollars. Failing to make that call has cost him his career. A text to her would have been even cheaper. Then again, when did Labour MPs ever understand the concept of price on a market.

The tragic thing from afar is that all that both these MPs (Roy & Cunliffe) had to do was knuckle down, work hard, advance their portfolios and they both had ministerial careers ahead of them for years, and years.

It's astonishing how politics, power and personal ambition can affect purported intelligence.

None of them are leaders. The most embarrassing sight in living memory was watching the three Davids being interviewed by Sainsbury for the position of leader of the opposition and asked questions such as 'what are your weaknesses?' It was cringe worthy and obvious that if any one of them was a leader he would already have been leading.

Leaders lead with blood on the floor, sword in hand standing on the bodies of the vanquished, Helen Clark style. What we actually have is adults playing King of the Castle. The tragedy is that anyone takes it seriously.

Nick ... you have hands on experience with this sort of nonsense much more than I and I respect what you have to say.

IMHO Roy was a clusterfuck manipulated by an even bigger clusterefuck of a Chief of Staff but she never had the 'goods' to be leader.

Cunliffe on the other hand had the ambition and smarts in spades but suffers from a terminal weakness ... seems that anyone who works with him can't ... unless they are sycophantic drones. He is a cross between Muldoon and Peters with all the plusses and minuses that go with those two split personalities.